If you’re a pot loving person, you know what happens after taking the first few drags of that rolled up stick in hand. Hunger hits, along with that numbing, laid back feeling.

You were fine just a few minutes ago, food thoughts far from your mind. But suddenly, you’re famished. You want to eat something, anything.

You’d stuff yourself with whatever leftovers can be found in the fridge or the cupboards you never open. You think of the quickest fix because you’re starting to starve a little. You find a half-eaten chocolate and quickly devour it. Then you go looking for more.

Maggi with ketchup, toast with pickle, biscuits with peanut butter, eggs with mayonnaise, chips with jam, bread with milk, you’d go for the oddest combinations, as long as it’s some kind of snack. Heck, you’d even swallow a live fish.

You’re missing good old home cooked meals like crazy. You’d sell your soul for rajma rice. Hunger pangs are gnawing at your insides, making you lose your mind. Your appetite has been rising at an alarming speed.

Finally, you get fed. The pain starts dying with every bite. Life’s good again. Everything is beautiful. Then you pass out and do the same in a few hours again.

But have you ever wondered why we get so desperate for munchies after smoking marijuana? What if you discover that it’s all a sort of trick?

Well, there are a bunch of reasons for the mystery case of hunger.

For starters, your sense of smell becomes way, way better, thanks to ‘Ghrelin’, also called the “hunger hormone”. It boosts appetite in general and triggers something known as ‘hypothalamus’ in the brain. It also sets the GI tract for food intake and makes digestion easier and faster.

It’s complicated stuff.

But that’s not all that marijuana does. It also reaches another part of the brain called Ventral Tegmental Area (VTA), which makes neurotransmitter ‘Dopamine’.

Yeah, dopamine allows you to feel so good about smoking pot. The more dopamine released, the greater you’ll feel. It handles the pleasure businesses of your body. That’s why it can be addictive.

On the other hand, Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is actually what gives you the high in which you forget everything. THC is your real trip. It’s the main active ingredient of marijuana, called cannabinoid. Cannaboids come in 85 types. They all have different effects.

See, THC does something sneaky. It binds itself to Anandamide, another hunger stimulator. This makes you believe that you’re much hungrier than you actually are. Mental manipulation, you guys!

Then there’s 5’ adenosine monophosphate-activated protein kinase, or AMP, a protein that pretty much rules the hunger games in our bodies. I could cook an entire meal in the time I learn to pronounce that. Anyhow, it does the metabolism related job. And that’s that.

Basically, every component is doing what it’s supposed to do, even what it’s not supposed to do.

This complete chaos leads you the kitchen like a greedy pig. You just can’t stop. And everything tastes double, triple awesome. Whatever you bite into seems mouth-watering AF.

Now you know why that’s happening. Next time you roll one, be prepared for your system to play games with you again. Unless you want to quit. That way you can normal and stick to regular diets.

But maybe you’re not going to do that. You probably don’t even care! And why should you? That joint is always there.

Masthead source: dailydot